


From Dreams to Reality

by 19thjester



Category: Quantum Leap
Genre: Gen, Post-MI
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-05-28
Updated: 2017-06-06
Packaged: 2018-11-05 19:41:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 9,704
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11020215
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/19thjester/pseuds/19thjester
Summary: Samantha once Leaped with her father in her dreams. Now she's been recruited to bring her father home.





	1. Call to Adventure

The dreams had happened several times a year since Samantha was twelve, over twenty years. In all of them, she was usually in a different time and place, accompanied by a tall man with a startling white lock in his hair. He never said so, but Samantha somehow knew he was her father. She wasn’t sure why, since he looked nothing like the man her mother said was her birth father.

They always worked together in those dreams, Samantha and Dad. They worked on changing history, helping people out. After they finished, they found a place to sit and talk physics. Tonight, Dad was unhappy. He said he’d been doing this for a long time, but he was tired. 

Samantha asked, “Can’t you stop? Do you have a home to go to?” 

“There’s too much out there, Sammy Jo,” Dad said. He always called her by her childhood nickname. “Too many wrongs, and I have to right them all. For me, this is home.”

He’d said as much before, several times, so Samantha accepted it. But when she woke up, there were tears on her cheeks. Dad was in a prison, a prison of his own making. 

Then again, those were only dreams. He couldn’t be a real person. Time travel was impossible, anyway. They’d even discussed as much during their physics talks.

When Samantha came into the lab for work that morning, her boss stopped her. “Can we get your help on something?”

“Sure. What is it?”

“I know your first doctoral degree is in physics. Weitzman told me he had a problem. He’s trying to get a physics project completely shut down, but the director won’t budge on the final report.”

“Any reason why me? The physics?”

“Plus you’re a woman. He says the director is the womanizing type. Weitzman thought a woman who really knew physics would help out the most with getting that last report done.”

Samantha gritted her teeth. “All right. Do I have to do this during work hours?”

“Yes. You’ll get time away from your current project. Weitzman promised he’d pay overtime if you can get this done fast.”

“I can deal with that. Where is this director?”

The director who refused to shut down his beloved project was sitting in an office downstairs, contemplating a blue orb sitting on top of an old computer mainframe. His dark graying curls kicked out everywhere. His bright blue sport coat with metallic lapels was wrinkled. Samantha noticed that his black shirt, underneath the coat, had a pattern of constellations on it. The director looked up, and the lines on his face rearranged themselves into a smile. “Hello, sweetheart. Are you the latest bribe from Weitzman?”

Samantha took a step backwards. “Excuse me? Bribe?”

The director narrowed his eyes in reminiscence. “There’s been a bevy of beautiful ladies coming through here, all of them telling me that they’ll let me into their beds if only I’ll finish the report and let mean old Weitzman chew up what’s left of this project.” He shook his head. “I had to tell them all no. It was hard.” The director sighed and dug into his pocket before remembering something else. “Shinola!” He banged his fist on the desk. “Why’d that bastard have to take away my cigars too?”

“Why can’t you finish writing the final report? Why will Weitzman chew up what’s left?”

“I’m sorry, sweetheart, where are my manners? Come, sit down.” The director gestured at the other chair in the room. “My name is Albert Calavicci. I’m a retired Navy admiral and once upon a time, I directed Project Quantum Leap. And you are?”

Samantha sat down, scooting her chair a little further away from Albert. “I’m Dr. Samantha Fuller.”

The orb came to life, crackling like a plasma ball. In a deep woman’s voice, it said, “Samantha Josephine Fuller, born on January twelfth, 1967, in Pottersville, Louisiana…”

Samantha turned pale. “How did she know all that?”

“Ziggy!” Albert barked. “You useless bucket of bolts! Stop scaring people before I even get the chance to introduce you! I’m sorry. Dr. Fuller, this is Ziggy. She’s a computer, a very nosy and very advanced one. Sam and I built her together.” There was a note of pride in Albert’s voice.

Albert seemed genuinely happy now, just thinking of this Sam. “I’m guessing Sam isn’t here to help you write the final report, Admiral?” Samantha asked.

A dark cloud crossed Albert’s face. “Something like that, yes.”

“Can you tell me more about Sam?” Samantha hoped talking about this Sam would cheer him up enough to finally finish this report that Weitzman needed so badly.

Albert’s face relaxed back into a broad smile. “God, Sam. Samuel Beckett, but not the playwright, mind you. He won a Nobel for physics, back in the eighties… We worked together on this government project, Star Bright. One day, he comes to me with this crazy idea. He wants to travel in time.”

“But that’s impossible.” Samantha’s hazel eyes narrowed.

“Not for Sam. He could get anything done. We worked together on Quantum Leap.” Albert explained about the project, how they had toiled for years without any solid results. When Sam was pressured to prove his results, he went into the Accelerator and traveled through time. Or, as Albert put it, Leaped into time. Sam would go from era to era, setting things right.

This was reminding Samantha a lot of her dreams. Could this be her Dad…? “Did Dr. Beckett have any children?”

Something flickered across Albert’s eyes. Regret? “A son. But Sam’s never met Johnny.”

A son. Not a daughter. Maybe it wasn’t her Dad, after all.

“What about you?” Albert asked. “Where are you from? Ziggy said Louisiana, right?”

“Yeah, Louisiana. But we moved to Baltimore when I was thirteen.”

“Baltimore? Not Chicago?”

Samantha frowned. “My stepfather got two job offers at one point. One was in Baltimore, the other was in Chicago. He went with Baltimore. How’d you know about Chicago?”

“Lucky guess.” Albert waved it away.

Samantha looked at Ziggy. “What can you tell me about Albert?”

The orb replied, “He kisses the girls and makes them cry.”

What a cryptic answer! But it somehow sounded like Albert. “Thank you. Why will he not finish the final report?”

“Hey now-” Albert protested. “Ziggy, don’t answer that!”

Ziggy overrode him. “Dr. Beckett has not come home yet. Admiral Calavicci is waiting for him so they can write the final report together, but there has been no contact since June 21, 1999. That was eleven months and eleven days ago.”

Samantha looked back and forth between Ziggy and Albert, who was slumped on his desk, face in his arms. Albert would not tell her the full story, but Ziggy would. “Ziggy, do you think we can bring Dr. Beckett home?”

“Yes.”

“Why do you think that?”

“Because we are both Dr. Beckett’s daughters, Sammy Jo.”

Nobody had called her that since high school. “Wait. What?”

The bright green iMac sitting on Albert’s desk came to life and made a foghorn noise. Albert, startled, sat up and moved his chair away from the desk. 

“Thank you, Admiral. Sammy Jo, I want to show you something.”

“Ziggy!” Albert protested. “What on earth do you think you’re doing?”

“Sammy Jo has come to fulfill her destiny, Admiral.” 

Ziggy made the desktop computer log in. A picture file opened up. It showed a portrait of a man in his forties with brown hair and a lock of white hair on one side.

The man looked exactly like her Dad in her dreams. Samantha stood up. “I’m sorry. This is too weird for me. I don’t think I can do this.” She shook her head, eyes wide with fear, then she fled the office. 

Behind her, she could hear Albert berating Ziggy in his gravelled voice, calling her a bucket of bolts and other far more colorful names.


	2. Supernatural Aid

Samantha had just finished feeding her spaniel Buster and was about to dig through the freezer for dinner when the doorbell rang.

Samantha opened the door a crack. It was Albert. She frowned and closed the door.

A frantic pounding on the door. “Wait!”

Putting the chain on, Samantha opened the door again. “Yes? How’d you find me?”

“I talked to your boss. Look, I owe you an apology. Have you had dinner yet?”

“No.” By now, Buster had come sniffing to the door to see who the stranger was.

“Hello, boy.” Albert smiled and knelt down to let Buster sniff his hand. “It’s okay. Tell your mom I mean no harm.” He stood back up. “I brought Chinese. Can I come in?”

Samantha glanced at Buster then back at Albert. Then she unfastened the chain and let him in.

He looked around, nodding in approval. There were a few prints on the wall. Albert came closer to one in particular, which showed a farmhouse sitting in the middle of a field of corn. “Why did you pick this one?”

“Dad told me he grew up on a farm. I thought of him when I saw that picture.”

“Dad? Is this your birth father or stepfather?”

“I called my stepfather by his first name and I never met my birth father. But… I have those dreams.” Samantha looked down at Buster, who was lying at her feet but keeping his nose pointed towards the delicious greasy bag of food.

Albert nodded. “Let’s eat.” He spread out the various take-out boxes on the kitchen table, opening them, while Samantha got plates.

As they ate, Albert asked, “Is Buster good for security?”

Samantha laughed. “If anything, he’d lick the robber all over before showing him where the safe is! An ex gave him to me and I like having someone to come home to. But it was the way you approached him that made me change my mind about you.”

“I’ve had a few dogs. Or was it one?” Albert frowned. “It’s hard, having memories from so many different timelines.”

“So… time travel is possible? That’s what happened with Dad?”

Albert pointed a chopstick at her. “Let’s talk about those dreams of yours first.”

Samantha chewed on a few bites of lo mein before answering. “Ever since I was twelve, I’ve had those dreams…” She explained them to Albert, who nodded, looking thoughtful.

“I wonder how that’s possible, his talking to you in your dreams. Are you dreaming together, or did he find a way to Leap you in as well?” Albert mused.

After leaving Albert and Ziggy earlier that day, Samantha had talked to her boss, who told her about most of the project being dismantled the previous summer. “There’s nothing left of the project, right? You were only allowed to keep Ziggy?”

Albert hedged. “Well… I have to make sure you’re on board first before I tell you this.”

“On board for what?”

In response, Al dug into his inner coat pocket and produced a paper. “Ziggy printed this out for you to read. She feels bad about you running off.” He gave Samantha the paper.

Samantha opened it. It was a note from Ziggy that addressed her as “sister.” Since Ziggy was the product of Dr. Beckett’s and Admiral Calavicci’s minds, and since Samantha was Dr. Beckett’s daughter, they were technically sisters, Ziggy explained. The note went on to explain Samantha’s origins, which seemed strange to Samantha but also explained a lot. Like why her mother wouldn’t talk about her birth father, especially after the first and only time Samantha told her about her dreams with Dad. Ziggy said she’d been working through the calculations and she believed the best chances for bringing Dr. Beckett home was to have Samantha leap to him. That way, Ziggy could recalibrate the equations for their collective neurons and mesons so that Samantha could be used as a rope to pull Dr. Beckett home. 

“So it’d be like my dreams? Only I’m alone?” Samantha asked Albert.

“Well, you wouldn’t be alone,” Albert said. “You’d have me. I helped Sam before too.”

It would be exciting, getting to change things just like she’d done with Dad. “I thought the project was dismantled?”

Albert’s eyes widened. “I need you to swear that you are completely committed to this before I say anything. I could get in big, big trouble for what I’m about to tell you.”

Samantha glanced down at Buster, whose head was lying on her ankle. “I’d need to figure out who’s taking care of my apartment, who’s taking care of Buster…”

“Sublease out your apartment, put everything in storage. We can take in Buster while you’re away. I’m sure Beth and Polly would be thrilled to have a dog around again, since it’s been awhile since Midge died.”

“Beth and Polly?”

“Beth is my wife. Polly is my youngest girl, in high school now.”

“You said Sam has a son?”

“I haven’t seen Johnny since he was a baby, not since his mother left the Project. Sam doesn’t know about him.”

“And he would get the chance to meet him if he came home? Why hasn’t Sam come home?”

“I don’t know. That’s what I want to find out. The problem with leaping is, it causes amnesia. If I leaped, what if I forgot about Sam? What if I died on a Leap without ever remembering my best buddy? You need a guide when you leap, and that’s what I’m here for. I helped Sam too.” Albert explained about neurological holograms.

Samantha considered it. She wouldn’t be all alone- she would have Albert. She would get to do what she did with Dad in her dreams and get to meet him for real. She would get to bring him home to a group of people who missed him dearly. “And when he comes home, you’ll write the final report, shut down the project once and for all?”

“Yes. That’s all I’ve ever wanted- for Sam to come home so we can start and finish this project together.”

All right. “I’m in.”

They shook on it over fortune cookies.


	3. The Threshold

Samantha talked to her boss and explained that yes, she was back on board to help Albert write his final report for Project Quantum Leap. Then she got Weitzman’s blessing to work from home for as long as it took.

Albert helped Samantha pack up her apartment and put it in storage, leaving only a week’s worth of clothes in a bag plus all of Buster’s things in a box. Then she came with him to his house. Albert said, “Polly is at school, but you’ll meet Beth shortly.”

His wife greeted them warmly. “Hello, Al! Who’s this?”

“I’m Samantha.”

“She’s going to help me bring Sam home,” Albert told her. “She’ll be staying in the bunker for a while.”

The bunker? As it turned out, Albert had a Cold War-era nuclear bunker in his backyard. After leaving Buster and the instructions for his care with Beth, who promised he’d be well looked after, Albert led Samantha to the bunker. After her bag was stowed in the bedroom, they walked to the other end of the bunker. There was a huge steel door that opened with a numbered combination. After 88-19-53 was keyed in, the door creaked open to reveal a spiral stairway going down.

Samantha followed Albert down the narrow iron staircase, each step clanging for what felt like two or three levels going down. Then they arrived into a room full of computers and various multi-colored control boards with a brilliant gold door as the only exit. Albert pressed his handprint to a scanner next to the door. It opened to reveal a room with three loudly-colored doors. Albert pointed to the neon-green door. “That’s the Imaging Chamber.” The electric blue door was the Accelerator, and the bright orange door was the Waiting Room. The room behind the gold door was where assistants would help Albert with the Leaping process. 

“But I need to get Ziggy set up all over again, and that’s going to be a pain,” he sighed. “I know some people from the Project days who are willing to come in too.”

Samantha looked around, wide-eyed. “How did you get all this?”

“Illegally,” Albert said. “The less questions, the better. I’m happy there was enough of the radium ring left for the Accelerator. Listen. I need to explain what’s going to go down here. You are living here in the bunker because you need the space and isolation to focus on the equations to bring Dr. Beckett home, which are very difficult to work out. Nobody is to come down except me or family members. There’s a special shield over the top of the bunker that should minimize the leaplight when you go into the Acceleration Chamber… oh, what am I talking about, you won’t get any of this. We didn’t know about this either, when Sam and I started out.”

“So what happens when I go into the Accelerator?”

Albert explained what had happened to Dad on his first Leap. “Next Saturday, at oh-two-hundred hours. You’re sleeping in the bunker until it’s time.”

That night, Samantha sat down to dinner with Albert and his family. After about the third or fourth time that Beth called him Al, Samantha asked, “Which do you prefer? Albert or Al?”

Albert smiled at her. “As long as we’re working together… Al. That’s what your Dad called me too.”

“Al. Got it.” Samantha dug into her dinner.

She played with Buster and Polly while Al drove to the office to get Ziggy’s orb and then install it in the bunker. Then Samantha slept in the bunker that night.

Monday was spent with Al’s assistants, Paul and Teresa, working on equations with Ziggy and discussing various plans on how to get Sam home. Ziggy thought that if Sam and Samantha leaped together for long enough, eventually their neurons and mesons would synchronize and it would be easier to bring both of them home.

Tuesday, Al and Samantha sat with Ziggy and Beth to set up the hologram. Once the implants were in, with Beth’s help, then they had to calibrate so that Samantha would be able to see and hear Al once she was out in the past or the future. As they calibrated, they talked. 

Al asked her endless questions about her background, about her education, her various degrees and where she’d gotten them. He was impressed that she had gotten her doctoral degree in physics at MIT. “Same as Sam,” he said. “What are the odds of that?”

“Did Dad have multiple degrees too?” Samantha asked. He never talked about this kind of thing in her dreams.

“Yes, six or seven. Music, ancient languages, archaeology, medicine…”

“I have three. Physics, biology, chemistry. My thesis for my chemistry degree was so impressive it got me a job offer and I decided to settle down.”

Al’s eyes crinkled. “Why not go for more degrees?”

Samantha shrugged. “I thought about it. But what’s the point? I have to settle down at some point and not live in the ivory tower of academia tower forever, don’t I? Besides, my mother didn’t have much and had to leave Louisiana because her future there was cursed.”

Al studied her face. “Do you think you’re cursed?”

Samantha shook her head. “No. My mother thinks the curse is broken now. But… I think I’ve taken on my father’s destiny, not my mother’s.”

“Are you okay with that? It’s a lot to take on, the title of Leaper. I tried it once, couldn’t hack it.” Al’s eyes were worried now.

“Just once?” Samantha had to smile. “I’ve been Leaping in my dreams for a while now. I think I can figure it out.”

“It’s different, doing it alone without someone there to help you out. That’s why I’ve been worrying about Sam for almost a year now.” Al sighed, then looked at the crackling blue orb. “Ziggy, what’s our progress?”

The calibration finished late at night, after Beth brought them dinner. Al didn’t say a word when it finished. He shut down the mainframe then left the bunker.

Wednesday, it was Paul who woke up Samantha. He apologized, but he said, “Admiral Calavicci sent me and Teresa to work on some tasks today. Do you mind helping us out?”

Samantha didn’t mind. As she worked with the assistants on getting Ziggy ready for the Leap and hologram imaging on Saturday, she talked with them. Paul had been recruited from an Ivy League university, but it was Teresa who had sought out the Project. A childhood interest in dinosaurs led her to study imaging technology and holograms.

“You met Al on a Leap? How?”

Teresa said, “Sam had Leaped into my mother to fix some wrong. I was so little I could see Al, and I still remember the yucky shirt he wore! Right before Al left, he showed me some holograms of dinosaurs, and I always wanted to know how he made that. So I really got into computers, and computer imaging. I applied to the Project as an intern, and I got in two summers ago. You should’ve seen the look on Al’s face when I showed up!”

Samantha laughed, then she turned somber as she remembered one particularly disastrous Leap her father had told her about, one that had left a man dying. “At least Sam fixed things for the better.”

“He did. I became friends with one of the guys working security. Paul, do you remember Walters?”

Paul said, “Big black guy? Mustache? Always brought in donuts on Fridays?”

“That’s the guy! I really miss him. I got to know him, since he escorted me and the other interns to our bunks. I once asked him if people looked for Sam. He said they did, that he’d had a few issues with them trying to break in.”

Samantha shivered. Even though she still wasn’t sure if all of those dreams were real, she didn’t want to make a negative impact.

Teresa saw her reaction and smiled. “Don’t worry about it. I don’t think we’d be here if everything Sam did turned out badly. I’m here, aren’t I?”

She had a point. The assistants wouldn’t have come if they didn’t trust Al. This was like a last hurrah for them, after all- a chance to get to work on this project again and bring Dr. Beckett home.

When Samantha went into the house for dinner, Al wasn’t there. Beth assured her, “Al’s all right. He gets those spells sometimes, about one thing or another. He’ll be fine tomorrow.”

Sure enough, on Thursday, when Samantha went in for breakfast, Al was there, laughing with Polly. Polly soon left for school, leaving Al and Samantha there.

“Sorry about yesterday,” Al said gruffly. “Ever have bad days? I had a whole string of them, back in Vietnam, and sometimes they come back to bite me in the ass.”

He wasn’t looking at Samantha when he talked about Vietnam, so she didn’t think it was about that. Then again, she wasn’t here to psychoanalyze him. She was here to earn her overtime and bring Sam home.

Al insisted on driving her into Santa Fe that day to show her the sights. There wasn’t much in White Sands or Alamogordo to see, so Samantha enjoyed the tour.

On Friday, as Al conferred with his assistants, Samantha went aboveground to get a breath of air and her cell phone rang. It was Weitzman. “How are you doing with that final report?”

“Good,” Samantha said. “Right now, we’re drawing up a plan to gather all the data. Then Ziggy needs to process it. Then Admiral Calavicci and I will discuss the results, before writing them up.”

“Good. Don’t take too long. I expect to hear from you by the end of August.” He hung up.

Samantha sighed. It couldn’t take that long. Ziggy’s estimates were that it would take five or six Leaps, at the most, for Samantha to calibrate her neurons and mesons with Sam’s.

That night, after the assistants went to sleep in their bunks, Samantha couldn’t sleep. She tossed back and forth, thinking. Hadn’t she and Dad talked so much about why time travel was impossible and dangerous? Was that Dad warning her not to go on the same path he had? No, she had to bring him home, one way or another.

“Morning, sleepyhead.” It was Al, in a copper jacket and dark brown pants. “I’ll wait by the door. Get this on.” 

Samantha changed into the Fermi suit. It was so tight-fitting she was grateful Al had also left a labcoat for her to put on as well.

She met him, along with the assistants. “Ready.”

The code was punched in. The four of them descended the staircase to the Control Room. 

Ziggy’s orb was now in its rightful place, hanging from the low ceiling. “Good morning, Admiral Calavicci, Dr. Fuller, Mr. Merrow, Ms. Bruckner.” They greeted her back, then Al gave his assistants and Ziggy instructions for the day while Samantha went to check out the electric blue door.

How had her father done it, just five years ago? It helped that both of them were on a mission. Samantha took a deep breath, bracing herself.

“Sorry it’s so late,” Al said, yawning. “But there’s a satellite going overhead that the light from your Leap should hit. Least suspicion possible, you see. I’ve been having Ziggy keep a lock on Sam’s position- we got lucky and managed to find him early in a Leap.”

“Where is he?”

“Right now, he’s in 1968. Staying in your own lifetime makes it easier for you to Leap, but I think you’ll get to leap to the fifties too, if you’re going with Sam. That’s how it worked when I Leaped with him. Long story- it didn’t work for keeping him home. Ready?”

Samantha took a shaky breath. “Ready as I will ever be.”

Al opened the blue door. 

Samantha went in. The door closed behind her. Not knowing what else to do, Samantha spread her arms out and waited for the radioactive particles to kick her into another year.

The position in time and space was locked on. The Accelerator Chamber activated, leaping Samantha to February 7, 1968, in Orangeburg, South Carolina.


	4. February 8, 1968: Orangeburg, SC

She found herself walking in a crowd of black college students. She twisted around, but a girl next to her said, “No, Adele, forget it. The white people in that bowling alley said we can’t go back. Other people are causing trouble there too.”

Behind her, a glass window smashed. The young woman who’d forgotten her name gulped and hurried on, following the crowd back to the state college. As they arrived on the campus, the group gradually split up. She- Adele? Was that really her name?- saw a white man in a copper jacket standing near a building.

“Samantha!” the man, who had curly dark hair, called out.

Who was he calling? Wasn’t her name Adele? She hurried on, not wanting to acknowledge the white man. What if he’d heard about what had happened at the bowling alley and wanted to hurl accusations at her? Some white people had followed the crowd on the way to campus, calling them names.

“Samantha! You, in the green dress! Ziggy, why isn’t she responding? Oh, she doesn’t realize…” The white man smacked at something colorful in his hand.

The young woman stopped, an island in a moving stream of students, and looked down at herself. Yes. She was wearing a green dress.

“Samantha, sweetheart, remember what we talked about? You’re not going to remember anything, and you really don’t.” A look of realization was dawning on his face. “You’re not even reacting to me calling you sweetheart.”

She gave the man a puzzled look.

“Listen. Don’t say anything to me- everyone else will think you’re talking to thin air. There’s a dorm that way. Ziggy says the girl you’ve leaped into lives there. Can we go into the bathroom there? We need a private place to talk.”

Following his instructions, she went into the dormitory and found a private bathroom. The white man pointed to the mirror. “Oh boy. Take a look, would you?”

A black girl stared back. No. This wasn’t what she looked like. She raised a hand, and the black girl in the mirror did the same. “I’m supposed to be white, right?”

“Yes, you are, usually. Your name is Samantha Fuller, and you’ve just Leaped through time.”

“I’m in… the past?” It was starting to come back to her now, in fragments. Yes. Where was… the man she usually Leaped with? The one who always greeted her when she arrived, told her what was going on?

“Listen. Ziggy says Sam is currently in Adele’s boyfriend, Daniel Banks. Your task is to stop the massacre that will happen in two days. Fifteen people will be killed. You need to find Sam, and explain who you are.”

“Sam is…” A memory clicked into place. “Dad! Dad’s here!”

“That’s right, your Dad is here.” The man’s eyes were soft. “I’m Al. You can only see and hear me. I’m a neurological hologram. Do you remember what that is?”

Samantha reached out for Al, but her hand only passed through his copper sleeve. “Yes. I remember now. I need to find Dad.”

This was so different from her dreams, which always started out with Dad finding her. It was strange, having to go search for him instead. 

Al told her, “Right now, Daniel’s in the cafeteria for dinner.” Samantha, using the directions given by Al, arrived there. 

“Hey girl!” a young woman there said. “Are you looking for Dan? He’s over there with his brothers.”

Sure enough, there was a group of young men with Greek letters on their jackets at one table. “Daniel!” Samantha called. “I need to talk to you.”

The young men started hooting. “Ooh, your lady needs you! Come on, Dan, go talk to your lady!” One of them, a young man with a short Afro, thick black glasses and a red madras shirt, sheepishly got up. “Hey Dell. What’s going on?”

“Come on, we need to talk.” When Samantha grabbed his hand, their auras dissolved. For the first time, Samantha saw her Dad in person and he looked exactly as he had in her dreams, down to the white lock of hair. They shared the same hazel eyes.

Her Dad’s eyes widened. “Yes, we need to talk.”

They left the cafeteria and Dad- or should she refer to him as Sam?- led her to a grassy square. They sat down on a bench.

Sam shakily took her hands into his. “What are you doing here?”

“Al sent me here.”

“Where’s Al? Is he here?” Sam looked around.

Al, standing a distance away and smoking a long cigar, shook his head. Don’t say anything.

“No,” Samantha said. “I got sent through time to retrieve you, bring you back home.”

Sam frowned. “Why do I need to come home? I got things squared away for Al. He should be happy now!”

“He still needs you.” Samantha explained about Weitzman and Al’s reluctance to shut the project down.

“Just tell Al to go ahead and shut it down without me. He can manage that. There are so many wrongs out there, and I need to right them all.” Sam’s face had hardened.

Al’s cigar dropped out of his mouth and turned invisible. His bushy eyebrows drew together as he marched right up to Sam. “Listen up, Dr. Samuel Beckett! No, you pompous wannabe Don Quixote, your Sancho can’t shut down this piece of shit without you! I have to account for your whereabouts, which is very, very hard without you there in the flesh! I’ve had to testify to so many assholes about how yes, you’re trapped in time, but yes, that’s your body, but no, you’re not in that body, and no, you were never diagnosed with dissociative identity disorder! I’ve had to face so many people on your damn behalf who think I should go to a mental hospital! Damn it, Sam, I need you to come home!”

Sam blinked. 

“Sam, did you hear me?” There was a faint note of hope in Al’s voice.

Sam shook his head. “I’m always Don Quixote, but at least my quests have meaning.”

Samantha thought Al was going to blow a gasket. “Yes, and where would Quixote be without Sancho, huh? Nowhere, that’s what! Quixote would still be back in the country without Sancho and Dulcinea and everyone else to back him up! What are you gonna do, ya bastard- leap until you die and leave your best friend, wife and children behind?!”

“You’ve read Don Quixote?” Samantha asked. In all her dreaming, Dad had never mentioned this story.

“I always related to him. We both had impossible dreams.” Sam smiled, his eyes looking into the far distance.

Samantha looked at Al, who had picked up his cigar and was inspecting the end of it. Then she looked back at Sam. “Do you see anyone else here?”

Sam looked around. “No. I thought I heard something about Quixote. Did you?”

“I’m not sure.”

Al shook his head in disgust. “So you hear me on Quixote? What about Donna? What about Johnny? What about me, Beth, our girls? What about the people you’ve left behind?”

Sam mused, “You know, I always wondered. Did Aldonza choose to change her name to Dulcinea because of Quixote?”

Al screamed at Sam, “Not Aldonza, you nozzle! Donna! Your Dulcinea! Do you even remember her?” He buried his head in his hands, then thunked his handlink against his forehead, eyes and mouth screwed shut. Ziggy said something. “I know, I know, it’s only ten percent synchronization so far, but I’m telling you, Sam heard me! He heard my voice!”

Sam said, “So do you know what we need to change?”

Samantha said, “There’s going to be a massacre in two days. We need to change it so that nobody dies.”

“All right, do you know what happened?”

Al had taken a deep breath, calming himself down. From the handlink, he recited, “Fifteen people die in a massacre. Some kids here started a bonfire near campus. The cops came up and protected the firefighters putting it out. But the crowd started attacking them, so the cops shot back.”

Samantha repeated Al’s words for Sam’s benefit.

“So we need to encourage peaceful protesting, and tell people to get out. Then nobody will die,” Sam said.

“Not that easy,” Samantha said. “Do you remember?” A memory of one of her Leaping dreams came to her. “I think this was the mid-sixties. I was maybe seventeen, and we were in what was supposed to be a peaceful protest. We were trying to calm down the crowd, but it was hard. There was that one guy who supported Malcolm X and had a bomb with him.” As soon as she spoke those words, she was surprised. She didn’t expect to remember so much from her dreams.

Sam nodded thoughtfully. “That’s right, in New Orleans. That was a rough one. Wait, how old are you now?”

“Thirty-three.”

“Time travel.” Sam shook his head. “I always wondered how you started Leaping with me. Didn’t it start after I met you?”

“After I met Sam-Larry for my mother’s trial, yes.”

“You grew up so quickly.” Sam smiled at her, and Samantha had to smile back. “So. We have two days to figure this out. Let’s finish dinner first.”

“Go ahead. I’m sure Daniel’s frat brothers miss him. I’ll catch up.”

Al was watching Sam leave, finger curled around cigar and mouth twisted to one side. “Remember, Samantha,” he said. “This isn’t one of your dreams where you get to be Leap buddies with your good old Dad. We have a mission here.”

“I know. I need to talk him into leaping with me. He’ll get better, Al, I swear.”

Al’s eyebrows were nearly meeting his nose now. “How could he forget about me? How is he fine with leaping with someone else?”

“Al, calm down. It’ll be fine.”

Al sighed, eyebrows still low on his face. “I don’t want to lose both of you.”

“Are Dad and I synchronizing?”

“Ziggy says you’re at eleven percent.”

“See? It will work out, Al. It will. He’ll go home and be all mad at himself for forgetting about his best friend.”

Al’s eyebrows relaxed. “Yes, he will.”

“We’ll get our mission done, we’ll talk physics, we’ll leap together, we’ll keep synchronizing.”

Al nodded. “Remember what you have to do.” He punched at the box in his hand, then disappeared through a wall of light, which soon disappeared as well.

***

After finishing Daniel’s and Adele’s classes for the day, the Leapers got together to discuss their plan for the next night.

Still unseen to Sam, Al sat in on their discussion. Sometimes he’d throw in an idea, which Samantha would relay to her father.

“Why did the bonfire happen to begin with?” Sam asked. “We have to think about that. What’s going on here?”

“Tensions were high after the protests at the bowling alley,” Al read, which Samantha repeated for Sam’s benefit.

It would be hard to encourage a peaceful attitude, they agreed, with high tensions. Everyone was on a hair trigger. The best course of action was to figure out when the breaking point was and to encourage as many people to get away before that.

Al punched in the information into his handlink. “Ziggy says the breaking points were when a banister rail hit an officer in the face and when an officer fired some warning shots. The records don’t say who threw the rail.”

Samantha repeated what he said. 

Sam squinted at her. “How are you getting all this information?”

Samantha and Al looked at each other with wide eyes. To tell Sam, or not to tell him?

“Are you working with Zoey? Did she recruit you?”

“What? I don’t even know who Zoey is!”

“A nozzle of a lady,” Al muttered.

“Who are you working with? Do you have a hologram?”

To hell with it. Like her sister had, Samantha overrode Al’s protests. “Yes. Al is here.”

Sam looked all over the place Samantha was looking at. “Where? I don’t see him.”

Al’s shoulders dropped. “I’m sorry, I can’t-” He turned around, his back to the Leapers, and started punching the door code into his box, which Samantha now knew was his handlink.

“Al! Wait!” Samantha shouted.

Sam’s eyes went back and forth between Samantha and the space where he thought Al was. “Al? Can you hear me?”

“Only too well,” Al said in a low tone of voice, his back still turned.

“Can he?” Sam asked Samantha, who nodded. “Listen, Al, I’m sorry. I don’t know what happened to sever our link.”

“We lost your body, Sam!” Al turned around to face his best friend. “Samantha, can you tell him about the synch thing?”

Samantha explained to Sam about the process, as proposed by Ziggy.

“So that explains my hearing what sounded like someone talking about Don Quixote last night,” Sam said.

“I think if we synchronize enough, you’ll be able to hear and see Al again. But we’ve got a Leap to work on.”

“We do.” Sam smiled grimly. “We should stick together. Grab my hand when you get the Leap feeling, okay?”

“If we’re synchronized enough, would we need to keep doing that?”

“I’m not taking any chances!”

The Leapers ran through various scenarios with Ziggy and Al, discussing various approaches. Their questions ranged from “What if we told them not to build the bonfire to begin with?” to “What if we told the crowd to stay back and kept that student from throwing the rail?”.

Martin Luther King, Jr., hadn’t been assassinated yet, so there was still the option of advocating for a peaceful approach. Sam had his doubts about this going over well while Samantha thought it could possibly work.

“Does Al still remember Watts?” Sam asked.

Al nodded, mouth set in a firm line. Samantha said he did.

“I tried to negotiate there. It didn’t end well.” Sam’s eyes were downcast. “Someone died. I wanted to keep him alive, but it didn’t work out. I say we just save as many people as possible.”

***

Two students, Daniel and Adele, waited near the front of the campus. A group of students was milling around the bonfire being set up in the street, getting things ready to throw into it.

“What do you think?” Sam asked his daughter.

“It’ll be a while. Someone will call the cops and the firefighters, then that’s where it starts.”

The bonfire grew in size. Some people were also standing around and talking like the Leapers were, so they didn’t stick out too much. The crowd coming to check out the bonfire also grew.

Then a siren sounded from down the street. A firetruck chugged up the street, followed by a line of police cars. Police officers swarmed out from the cars and moved in front of the firefighters. They shouted for the crowd to move back.

“Watch now,” Sam whispered.

The Leapers watched as the officers acted as a barrier between the firemen and the crowd. Some of the young men that were closest to the fire had things in their hands, things that were bound for the bonfire. One young man threw in a small chunk of wood before running off, an officer shouting at him.

“Look, there’s banister guy,” Samantha whispered. 

They both saw him: a student with a torn-off banister rail in his hands, arguing with two officers.

The Leapers nodded at each other, then moved through the crowd, urging people to go back to the campus. They told people as they went, “Look, they’re just going to put the fire out now, there’s nothing to see, go back to campus, I think it’s going to get ugly, please go, do you want to die because you’re going to die if you stay, go now!”

The banister guy had finally had enough and threw the rail into an officer’s face. Shouts went up as the officer fell to the ground, his face bleeding. A whistle went up- a signal among the officers. Then over about five minutes, as more students retreated, they assembled along the edge of campus, with their guns out. “Get back! NOW!” 

Thanks to the Leapers’ efforts, some students had already retreated into the campus. Some people were starting to head back. Sam stopped a fellow student. “What’s going on?” 

“Fire’s going out. I want to see.”

“Those officers have guns! Get back now!” Sam pointed back at campus.

But the crowd wanted to see the fire go out. As they started walking back, one of the officers raised his gun into the air and fired it, warning the returning crowd. The Leapers yelled at the people around them, over and over, “RUN!” as they fled back to campus.

More officers decided to follow the first one’s lead, lighting up the sky with gunfire. The sound of the officers’ reaction was so deafening that the Leapers’ shouts couldn’t be heard. People had gotten the message now- they were also yelling and running back to the campus.

A young woman fell down and Samantha helped her get up. “Do you need help?”

“No, I got it. Thank you.” The young woman ran.

The Leapers looked for students who had fallen and were most in danger of getting hit by officers. Finally, when the officers had stopped firing, they ran back to campus.

Sam slowed, panting, as he arrived at the cafeteria. “Are you hurt?”

Samantha shook her head. “You?”

“I think I’m good. What does Al have to say?”

Al, in a purple jacket now, checked his handlink. He looked upset now. “It was still pretty bad. But less people died- only three, not fifteen.”

“We should have done more,” Samantha said after repeating Al’s words.

“We did what we could. Let’s eat, let’s talk physics, then let’s move on.”

“Ziggy says you two are at 23% synchronization.”

As they sat together, they ate dinner. Some people came up to them to thank them for warning them about the officers near the bonfire. The Leapers discussed the equations for a time travel retrieval, particularly the part that determined who to lock onto for the retrieval.

“My brain isn’t what it used to be,” Sam said. “That’s what happens when you’ve leaped into so many people.”

“How many?” Samantha asked.

“I’ve lost count. Hundreds?”

They finished their dinner, then the Leapers looked at each other.

Al said, “Twenty-five percent synchronization now.”

“Ready?” Samantha asked, her hand on top of Sam’s.

“Ready,” Sam answered, and they Leaped together in a blue burst of light.


	5. July 4, 1976: Manchester, New Hampshire.

The Leapers arrived, sitting across from each other in a grassy backyard that opened to a nearby deep green-leaved forest. 

They were both wearing T-shirts and shorts striped in red, white and blue, with white stars on the blue stripes. 

“I think it’s the Bicentennial,” Samantha said, standing up and brushing off her knees. “I remember kids wearing these.”

“I don’t even remember where I was on the Bicentennial,” Sam said. “Mom and Katie were already in Hawaii, so I wasn’t in Indiana then.”

Al popped in, wearing a teal coat with black lapels and sleeves over gray pants that had black zig-zags on them. His cheeks rounded out into a huge grin when he saw the Leapers. “Oh! Look at you two! Aren’t you festive? Let’s see…”

“We think it’s the morning of July 4, 1976,” Samantha said.

“Correct! You’re in Manchester, New Hampshire. Your names are Mark and Karen Scott. You’re twelve and nine years old.”

Samantha relayed this to Sam.

“We’re kids?!” Sam groaned and flopped back into the grass. “Being a kid sucks!”

“Ziggy predicts with a 68% certainty that you two are here to prevent a fireworks accident. Your father, Chuck, blew his hands off while setting off fireworks on the Bicentennial. Because of that, he lost his job as a forklift operator, which led to his struggling with work and becoming perpetually unemployed, which led to a future on the streets for Karen and a future dead from AIDS for Mark.”

Both of the Leapers stared at Al. “All that from a fireworks accident?”

Al shrugged and smacked his handlink. “Ah, Chuck spent some time in AA and his wife is out on long ‘sales trips’ a lot. That explains it. Hmm. Ziggy thinks Mark and Karen have the best chance of success if you persuade their grandmother to take them in.”

“So we’re kids with a drunk alcoholic father who blew his hands off,” Sam repeated. “And I thought being in a chimp was bad!”

“At least we have an excuse for being the grownups here,” Samantha pointed out.

After some deliberation, the Leapers decided they had two objectives: to find the fireworks and hide them; and then to find their grandmother and talk to her about their home life.

The Leapers tiptoed back into the house. The sound of snoring could be heard, coming from the living room. When Sam investigated, he saw a large man slumped on a dirty brown couch. On the TV, a Texas jazz band was playing in Moscow.

“Okay, the father is asleep,” Sam whispered to Samantha. “Where do you think the fireworks are?”

“Check all the closets,” Samantha whispered back. Al was already checking his handlink, seeing if Ziggy could use it as an X-ray machine to check the house.

After Sam found the first alcohol stash in a closet, he debated throwing it out. He decided to leave it and keep looking for the fireworks.

From somewhere downstairs, Al yelped, “I found them!” 

Samantha went to retrieve her father. Both met Al in the kitchen, who pointed triumphantly to the Jack Daniels crate on top of the cupboards. “Try there!”

Balancing on top of a chair, Sam rattled the crate. He didn’t hear glass clanking, so he brought down the crate and opened it up. Sure enough, it was full of fireworks like Black Cat, Black Snake, and Roman candles.

“How should we get rid of these?” Sam asked. “Hide them in the woods?”

“Or set them off?” Samantha asked.

“What about the noise?”

“We’re a bunch of kids celebrating the Bicentennial early?”

“And I bet you all the fireworks stands will be sold out today,” Al said. “I remember, we’d just moved to Texas, for my stint at NASA, and I wanted to set off some fireworks with buddies for the Bicentennial. Nobody had thought to stock up, so Beth and I drove all over half of Texas with Ruth in the backseat, looking. No luck, not even with a cute baby to help us out!” He laughed.

After finding the kids’ bikes with baskets on the front and emptying out backpacks (“I don’t think those have been touched since school got out,” Sam said), they took all of the fireworks out of the crate and carted them to the woods, along with lighters.

Riding down the paths, the Leapers rode until they found an open meadow. After their bikes were secured to trees a safe distance away, all the fireworks were dumped in the middle of the meadow.

“What do we do? Hook everything up, light it up and then run like heck?” Sam asked.

“You’re no fun! Let’s play! I haven’t seen one of these since I was a kid.” Samantha picked up a Black Snake. She set the firework onto the ground, then lit it up. A long black tube erupted out of the firework. 

Sam sat next to it, watching. “What is that from?”

“Sodium bicarbonate.”

As they got into a lengthy discussion about the chemistry behind what made the different colors of fireworks, Al rolled his eyes impatiently. “Come on! What if Chuck wakes up soon and finds all his fireworks are gone? You need those gone, pronto!”

“All right, all right!” They lit up the other fireworks. The Roman candles erupted out of their hands and into the clear blue sky. Sam fused a group of them together, setting them off faster while creating multi-colored explosions. 

“Pity it isn’t night,” Al said.

“We have to get rid of these, Al,” Sam said.

“I know. But the country lit up that night… it was quite a sight.”

“I thought you couldn’t find fireworks?”

“Oh, we found some public display somewhere. With friends would’ve been better!”

When they got to the M-80s, the Leapers agreed it was better not to set them off, since they created too much noise. They found a large pile of old leaves in the forest and hid the M-80s under the pile.

Then they rode their bicycles back to the house. An older woman in her sixties was already there, laying out bread, meat, cheese and condiments for lunch. “Mark! Karen! Where have you been?”

The Leapers exchanged looks. Then Samantha said, eyes as wide and innocent as possible, “We were riding our bikes in the woods.”

The woman sighed. “All right. Did you say something to your father?”

Samantha felt the urge to lie, and knew that in the regular timeline, Karen would have lied on her father’s behalf. Not in this timeline. “No. He wouldn’t have cared. He would’ve slept through all of it.”

Sam added, “Besides, Dad gets mad when we wake him up.”

“I think that’s your grandma,” Al said behind Samantha, who nearly jumped out of her skin.

After the older woman left in the direction of the living room, muttering something about how Charlie couldn’t be counted on, Samantha turned to Al. “Please don’t do that again. And I figured as much.”

Sam said, laughing, “Trust me, you get used to it after five years.”

Al punched at his handlink. “That’s Mattie Scott, Chuck’s mother, your grandmother. Karen testified at some point she didn’t visit that often, just on a few holidays. I’m trying to find information on the mother, Lizzie, but Ziggy keeps getting dead ends.”

“How’s our synchronization?” Samantha asked.

“You two are at… thirty-four percent now. Not bad. Sam, where’d you get the ‘Daddy gets mad’ thing from?”

Sam frowned, his eyebrows almost coming together. “I’m… not sure. Sometimes I get insight from the Leapee.”

Suddenly, screams erupted from the living room. The Leapers rushed to see what was happening. They peeked around the corner, Sam’s head above Samantha’s.

Chuck was screaming at his mother about how he worked his tail off to take care of those ungrateful brats, while she was screaming right back at him about how he’d obviously been asleep all day, how he hadn’t even noticed his children leaving the house to go into the WOODS, which was very DANGEROUS, especially on a day like the Fourth of July where all kinds of idiots were setting off fireworks.

“They’re old enough to not need a babysitter!” Chuck insisted. 

“What if they had gone into the woods and never come home? What then?”

“They’ll be fine. I keep the dangerous things out of their reach.” Chuck shook his head in disgust. “Why’d you come here, other than to yell at me?”

“I needed to make sure the kids were okay! And what on earth were you doing, sleeping in the middle of the day?”

“You know my job in the factory is tough! I needed rest!”

“You don’t even pick up anything! The MACHINE does it for you! And I can smell it on your breath!” The Leapers ducked back into the hallway as Grandma stomped out. “You have a CRATE of the stuff on top of your fridge, where the kids can see it!”

“Mama…” Chuck protested, trailing behind her. “That crate doesn’t have alcohol in it. That’s where I’m keeping the fireworks, for tonight.”

She wasn’t having any of it. Their grandmother found a stepstool, and then took down the crate. She shook it, puzzled. Then she opened it. “It’s empty.”

“What? No, no, it isn’t.” Chuck ran forward to inspect the crate, eyes bulging. “What?! Where did they go? They were right there last night!”

The Leapers exchanged looks. To say something or not? Al stood between them, watching the scene unfold, handlink poised for any answers from Ziggy.

“Oh for goodness’ sakes, Charles. First the kids leaving the house without even telling you, then a burglar breaking in!”

Chuck spluttered. “It’s the Fourth of July! What kind of imbecile would steal fireworks on the Fourth of July?!”

Al remarked, shrugging, “He has a point.”

“What kind of IMBECILE is asleep by noon on a holiday?”

“Mama, I told you, my job is tough--”

“You had your chance to SLEEP in yesterday! Don’t make excuses to me! We should call the POLICE about this!” Grandma was pacing the kitchen now, agitated, as Chuck tried to soothe her.

Al smacked at his handlink. “Ziggy says the best chances here are to say something. Otherwise, there’s a 54% chance Karen and Mark could end up in a foster home.”

Samantha spoke up. “Sorry, Grandma. It was us who took the fireworks. We hid them in the woods.”

Sam added, “We didn’t want Dad to hurt himself.”

Grandma wheeled on Sam. “What a responsible young man you’re being, UNLIKE your father. What made you think he would hurt himself?”

“He’s been drinking a lot. We found his stashes in the closet.”

“Mmhmm. And when did this start?”

Al consulted his handlink. With his help, Samantha answered. “After Mom left, two weeks ago.”

Grandma glared at Chuck. “Why didn’t you say something? I could have HELPED around here more, moved down from Bangor!”

“Mama, I-”

“Mark. Karen. Please help me FIND your father’s stashes. He needs help.”

Sam led their grandmother to the closets where he’d seen stashes and Al helped find a few others. As she lectured Chuck about exactly what she planned to do, Al read Ziggy’s estimates from the handlink. “Mark and Karen end up better off, at least until… high school. Oh. Chuck died in a wreck then and they ended up in foster homes. Now Mark’s had some stints in jail and Karen didn’t finish college. Better see if you can make things even better. You’re at forty-three percent synchronization now.”

Samantha tugged at their grandmother’s dress. “Grandma? Can we come stay with you? We don’t feel safe here.”

“But you should be with your Dad!” Their grandmother looked at the pile of bottles she planned on throwing out, and then sighed. “First thing in the morning, I’m calling MY lawyer and seeing what I can do. We NEED to figure out if your mother can take you too.”

She hauled the bag of clinking bottles outside and the handlink lit up in Al’s hand. “Oh good! Ziggy says the mother ended up abandoning her parental rights. Good riddance.” He rolled his eyes. “Chuck ends up in a rehab program while Grandma got custody of the kids. I guess there were a few prior incidents… but Mark and Karen avoided jail and ended up in successful lives! You two are at forty-six percent synchronization now.”

“Al,” Sam realized, his eyes widening. “God, it’s so good to hear your voice.”

Al’s eyes widened too, then they narrowed. “You can hear me now?”

“I think it’s a side effect of the synchronization process,” Sam said.

“Well, good. That means it’ll be easier to bring you home. We now know you’ll be in sync with both me and Samantha.”

“But we’re still here,” Samantha noted. “We haven’t Leaped out yet.”

“Ziggy says you have a few percent synchronization left.”

“I think we should enjoy the Bicentennial while we can. Aren’t there fireworks in the city somewhere?” Sam asked Grandma, who’d just returned.

There were, and Grandma took them that night. After watching a performance by Revolutionary War re-enactors, the Leapers lay on a blanket, their fingertips touching, as red, white and blue fireworks erupted in the night sky overhead.

“Ready?” Sam asked.

“Ready,” Samantha said, and they disappeared in a crackle of blue light.


End file.
